By Monica Yelin |

While most rational people oppose fascism or any authoritarian government, most don’t become violent.

Every movement begins with an idea that sounds noble. Oppose tyranny. Fight fascism. Protect the oppressed. But history teaches us that ideals can mutate once rage replaces reason. That’s the uncomfortable truth behind today’s Antifa, an American network whose actions often betray the very freedom it claims to defend.

Antifa is short for Antifaschistische Aktion, a 1930s German Communist front that fought Hitler’s Brownshirts. Antifa in America traces its roots to 1930s anti-fascist movements and later reemerged in the 1980s punk and anarchist scenes as groups like Anti-Racist Action confronted neo-Nazis in the streets.  After 2016, Antifa gained national visibility during protests and riots in cities like Berkeley, Portland, and Seattle, where confrontations often turned violent. While far less extreme than organized insurgent groups abroad, the warning signs are unmistakable. Its trajectory shows how movements that begin with moral conviction can drift toward aggression and chaos when confrontation becomes the goal instead of justice.

Equating a handful of masked militants in Portland with the soldiers who stormed Normandy is not only absurd, it’s historically dishonest. Since 2016, the black-bloc style of protest has repeatedly evolved into assault and arson. Here are some examples of the hundreds of instances of violence:

• Sacramento 2016: counter-protesters, including Antifa-affiliated activists, confronted a group hosting a rally. Among the outcomes: at least eight people were injured (five of them stabbed) in the clashes.
• Berkeley 2017: fires, smashed windows, and $100,000 in campus damage during protests of a college speaker.
• Portland 2019: journalist Andy Ngo beaten unconscious while filming a rally.
• Summer 2020: nightly riots outside federal buildings left dozens of officers injured, vehicles burned, and downtowns barricaded.
• Atlanta 2023: Molotov cocktails hurled at officers guarding the “Cop City” training site.
• Seattle 2024: a journalist chased and bloodied during a university protest.

These are not isolated incidents or random clashes. These are patterns, documented on video, acknowledged even by local Democrat mayors, and costing taxpayers millions in overtime and reconstruction.

Yet some commentators still affirm: “Antifa isn’t an organization, it’s just an idea.” Others claim the violence is defensive. But ideas don’t torch courthouses, burn vehicles, or assault civilians, and self-defense doesn’t include sucker-punching reporters. Calling every riot “mostly peaceful” is like calling a thunderstorm mostly sunny. It insults the victims, the business owners, and the credibility of legitimate peaceful activists. Let’s not excuse it on culture.

Those who do not know history risk repeating it. As a Colombian American, I recognize this trajectory. In the 1960s, Colombia’s FARC guerrillas started as idealists fighting inequality. By the 1990s, they were kidnapping civilians, involved in extortion, illegally mining, and trafficking cocaine. When ideology becomes license for violence, moral authority dies, and public sympathy with it. Antifa risks that same fate: the more it excuses brutality, the more ordinary citizens turn away. This movement lost its way because its ideology won over its ethics. While the scale of violence committed by Colombia’s guerrilla movements like the FARC was far more extreme, their trajectory offers a compelling cautionary example. Antifa is nowhere near that level of brutality, yet it similarly shows how movements born from ideological zeal can drift into aggression, intimidation, and moral decay when rage replaces reason. It becomes anarchy.

Defenders often romanticize Antifa’s “heritage” while denying its modern crimes. That selective memory is not education; it’s propaganda, and quite frankly, intellectually dishonest. You can’t celebrate the legacy of World War II anti-fascists while pretending not to see the fires and shattered storefronts of recent years. You cannot chant about freedom while silencing speakers with fists. To do so is to replace truth with mythology.

Authentic anti-fascism doesn’t wear masks; it stands in daylight. It builds schools, mentors voters, and debates ideas. It fights bad laws with better arguments, not with bats and firebombs. If America truly wants to inoculate itself against authoritarianism, we must model civility, not mirror the thuggery we condemn.

On the other hand, Neo-Nazis and white-supremacist groups have tried to attach themselves to political movements, only to be condemned and even removed from rallies when they appear. Those individuals represent hatred, not ideology. The difference is that such groups are publicly rejected across the political spectrum, while Antifa’s violence too often meets silence or worse, justification from those who should know better. Condemning violence should never depend on which side commits it. Yet that’s the double standard we keep seeing, where outrage is selective, accountability is uneven, and moral courage stops at party lines.

We need accountability. Law enforcement has every right to treat assaults and arson as crimes, regardless of ideology. Journalists should stop romanticizing riots as passionate resistance. Universities should defend free expression, not tolerate intimidation squads. And citizens, left or right, must refuse to excuse political violence simply because it comes from their side.

The White House’s decision to designate Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, as detailed in the official fact sheet, was neither symbolic nor premature; it was a recognition of a growing threat within our own borders. While Antifa lacks the global hierarchy and reach of foreign terror groups, its pattern of organized violence, intimidation, and digital harassment fits the textbook definition of domestic terrorism: using fear to advance political aims. Beyond street riots, Antifa’s tactics include doxing, publicly exposing private citizens and officers, along with targeted threats, online stalking, and mob-style intimidation. These actions are designed not to debate ideas but to destroy reputations and silence dissent through fear. The movement’s decentralized nature makes it harder to track, not less dangerous. Its networked aggression, on the streets and across the internet, creates fear, suppresses free expression, and destabilizes communities. In that sense, Antifa may operate at a smaller scale. Still, its intent to impose ideology through chaos places it firmly on the spectrum of political extremism that the federal government has every right, and duty, to confront.

Let me be clear: there is no fascism in America today. Fascism is when the state controls every aspect of life, when citizens vanish for speaking their minds, when elections are illusions, and fear, not freedom, decides what people say or do. It’s when people whisper instead of debating, when obedience replaces thought, and when loyalty to power becomes a matter of survival. None of that exists here. We protest freely, vote, and challenge authority every single day. We are imperfect, but we are still free. Calling our nation fascist doesn’t expose tyranny; it insults the millions who truly lived under an absolute dictatorship.

Fascism feeds on fear; liberty thrives on honesty. When we excuse violence because it comes from our side, we forfeit the moral high ground. The path back to credibility begins with truth: Antifa’s past may have noble roots, but its present bears broken bones and burned streets. Let’s oppose fascism without becoming what we hate.

Monica Yelin is the Executive Director of the Hispanic Liberty Alliance.